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Weapons inspections? yes, for everyone

by Mark Sommer, 

BERKELEY (IPS) When the 200,000 demonstrators marching on Washington on January 15 finished rallying near the Capitol, they turned to the Navy Yard to undertake, they said, a citizens' inspection of the weapons of mass destruction warehoused there.

It was a massive piece of political theatre, of course. There was no way they or anyone else would ever be allowed in to see anything within the tightly-guarded compound, let alone its crown jewels. But they were making a point that in the past few months has become obvious to nearly everyone other than most Americans - that the same government that demands total and immediate disclosure of all weapons of mass destruction (whether they exist or not) possessed by Iraq and North Korea, would itself never allow anyone - UN or otherwise - to come anywhere near their top secret sanctums.

Of course, this is rank hypocrisy, breathtakingly brazen in its inconsistency. But regardless of the Bush administration's motives, in insisting so vehemently on a rigorous inspection regime it has established a gold standard for weapons inspections and enforceable disarmament. If applied with equal consistency and rigor to every other nation that possesses or is thought to possess weapons of mass destruction, this precedent would represent a quantum leap in reducing the threat posed by all such arms.

Lest we dismiss this point as purely theoretical, we need only consider the words of Richard Butler, the hard-nosed former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq. Speaking to a conservative Australian think-tank, he condemned what he termed Washington's "shocking double standards", arguing that "the spectacle of the United States, armed with its weapons of mass destruction, acting without Security Council authority to invade a country in the heartland of Arabia and, if necessary, use its weapons of mass destruction to win that battle, is something that will so deeply violate any notion of fairness in this world that I strongly suspect it could set loose forces that we would deeply live to regret."

A US attack without United Nations backing and without any effort to curb the possession of weapons of mass destruction globally, said Butler, would be a contravention of international law. Moreover, he argued, the stated US motive - to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction - lacks credibility because of Washington's failure to deal with others on the same terms.

U.S. allies Israel, Pakistan, and India have nuclear arsenals but have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States and other permanent Security Council members are themselves the possessors of the world's largest quantities of nuclear weapons

Instead of beating the drums of war, Butler asserted, the United States should propose an international mechanism similar to the Security Council to enforce the conventions controlling proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry. It should also take the lead by reducing its own stockpiles. "I hope," he concluded, "we don't have to await the train wreck before we decide to change history."

The United States in particular should well understand national sensitivities to infringements on their sovereignty and secrecy and the unprecedented - which is not to say unjustified - nature of the demands it is making on Iraq. When the Chemical Weapons Convention was brought up for ratification before the US Senate, the considerable opposition centred around the contention that no one - not even a neutral international monitoring agency - had the right to inspect any U.S. chemical manufacturing facility, military or commercial. And while the treaty was ultimately ratified, both the U.S. government and the American chemical industry have since thrown every roadblock in the way of effective monitoring of their remaining stockpiles.

In fact, in the run-up to its attack on Iraq, the Pentagon has revealed that it plans to use chemical and biological weapons of its own on the very nation it suspects of hiding such weapons. The point of this argument is not to shout "Gotcha!" but to embrace the inspection and disarmament regime the US has put in place and unwittingly offered as a model for the world. It was surely not its intention to see the same searing searchlight it aims at Iraq's weapons facilities turned back on the arsenals of its allies and - god forbid! - its own. But there has never been a better opportunity to affirm the bedrock rule of equal application of the law. In plain language, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The point is also not to force the Bush administration to back off in its insistence on true transparency. Complete disclosure is an altogether laudable objective. We have every reason to thank the Bush administration for demanding it. Now we need only to demand the same rigor in enforcing transparency on the entire illegitimate enterprise of manufacturing and maintaining all arsenals of mass destruction.

Given the obsessive preoccupation with secrecy and control common to most governments and arms manufacturers, we can't expect them to embrace any inspection regime that would force them to divulge what they have so assiduously hidden even from their own peoples.

That is why the demand for universal inspections and enforceable disarmament must begin with civil society, the billions of people who are not party to the deadly quarrels between nations but are the pawns too often sacrificed in the power struggle.

Those who pay for the weapons have every right to see what their money is buying and to decide whether this is the best and highest use of their hard-earned wages.

Indeed, maybe that's why our own governments are so secretive about what they're building. Were we ever to find out what's behind those tightly guarded gates, we might never let them build them again.

(Mark Sommer is a columnist and radio host who directs the Mainstream Media Project, a U.S.-based effort to bring new voices to the broadcast media)..

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